FACULTY SENIOR ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS & PROMOTIONS

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, School of

Pathology

Dr Vindana Chibabhai

Dr Chibabhai is a specialist Microbiologist who obtained an MMed in 2015. She is a Senior Lecturer within the CMID, currently registered for a PhD.

In terms of Teaching, Dr Chibabhai’s Undergraduate teaching portfolio includes involvement in MBBCh 2 up to GEMP 3 level and teaching Dental, Pharmacy and Nursing students. Her Postgraduate teaching involves training registrars in Clinical Microbiology, Clinical Pathology and BSc Honours students. Dr Chibabhai’s participates in, and input in the Department’s course development, planning and student assessment. In order to reach the Undergraduate and Postgraduate student audience during lockdown, when face-to-face interactions were not allowed, she developed a Microbiology and Infectious Diseases podcast targeting students and clinicians. Episode topics are those encountered in everyday clinical practice, which are important for students and clinicians. Dr Chibabhai has supervised 6 Master’s and 2 Honours students to completion and currently manages 5 Postgraduate and 1 GEMP student research project.

Dr Chibabhai’s research niche is antimicrobial resistance (AMR), antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) and healthcare-associated infections (HAI). She has 26 publications in PubMed, including several case studies and an editorial. She is the first or senior author in 12 of the completed publications, the majority of which are in international journals with decent impact factors such as the CID ( IF=20), IJI (IF=12), and Clin Micro and Inf (IF=13). She is Principal Investigator in two ongoing research grants, and has 21 congress presentations and has delivered three plenaries.

Dr Chibabhai has a complex service record, including contributions to the University, the NHLS, the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital and the Clinical Microbiology profession nationally. She co-chairs the antimicrobial Stewardship Committees at the CMJAH and NMCH, and has membership of several University and NHLS Committees. Nationally, her involvement includes the NHLS Microbiology Technology Assessment Committee, FIDSSA Candida Auris Working Group, FIDSSA Congress Scientific Committee 2019, Advisory Committee PathRed 2017 and NHLS EUCAST Working Group 2018-2019. She is a reviewer of several journals and has examined a number of research reports for Postgraduate students.

We congratulate Dr Chibabhai on her promotion to Associate Professor